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Friday, January 17, 2014

The Sharia way

Forty-year-old Krishna Bahadur Budha of Rukum and Jabar Singh Darlami,
25, of Nawalparasi had never met each other before in Nepal. They were
both caught without passports by immigration in Iran as they were trying
to make their way into Europe. Their case would have languished in the
local courts had Nepal’s ambassador to Pakistan Bharat Raj Poudel not
intervened. Poudel, who is also in charge of Nepali affairs in Iran,
took their case up to Iran’s vice president and the two men were
pardoned. Although they are technically free to go, Budha and Darlami
can’t go back to Nepal because they don’t have money to buy a ticket.

Budha and Darlami are not the only ones taking the backdoor to
Europe. A new route for human trafficking has hundreds of Nepalis flying
to the United Arab Emirates, crossing the Persian Gulf, and then going
over land via Iraq and Turkey over to Europe. In the past year, Poudel
says his embassy managed to return home dozens of Nepalis, sometimes in
groups as large as 15.

Migrants caught in Turkey are usually handled by the International Red Cross, International Migrants’ Alliance,
and other human rights organisations and eventually sent back. Since
these organisations aren’t as active in Iran, it is difficult for those
caught to make a case. And if the guilty parties cannot convince
authorities that they have the means to return immediately, they are
treated as ordinary criminals by Iran’s courts.

According to an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
countries like Iran and Iraq are not as open to other countries and
their administration tends to treat those without papers on par with
local criminals, instead of considering them victims of human
trafficking.

Narayan Prasad Dhakal was working for the Al Amco company in Iraq
when his visa expired and authorities put him in jail in Basra. Sushma
Gurung was caught, accused of stealing $10,800 and 250 grams of gold
from her Iraqi MP employer. The government stipulated a Rs 170,000 bail
on her and she is still in custody. According to a statement released by
the Iraqi government on 3 January, three Nepalis - Kamal Tamang, Devi
Bahadur BK, and Bal Bahadur - were caught begging in the country’s
northern Kurdistan province.
Because the migrants do not reveal the actual reason why they are
caught, getting them to return home is harder. They always repeat what
their agents have taught them, that they were ‘kidnapped and sent here
by a Bangladeshi agent’, which makes authorities even more suspicious.

Earlier in 2013, five Nepalis were caught in Iraq after an agent
convinced them he was sending them to Kuwait. They were given five-year
sentences. After Nepal requested Iraq that they were innocent, the
government decided to let two of them go free. The other three are
caught in a blood money scheme, rescue from which is made near
impossible by Sharia law.

Krishna
Bahadur Budha, 41, who worked as a labourer in Dubai, was trafficked by
agents on the promise of sending him to Greece. After he returned, he tells the
story.

Five years ago I left for Dubai to work in construction. The little
savings I could manage from my salary of 800 Dirhams per month went into
paying for my wife’s uterus cancer treatment back in Nepal. She died
while I was still abroad. When my three-year contract ended and my visa
expired, I didn’t return home because I was knee deep in debt.

Although I managed to find illegal work in Dubai, my employer knew
how desperate I was and squeezed every penny out of my pay-checks. A
friend told me about paying 1,500 Dirhams up front to go to Greece. I
would need to pay $1,000 once I got there, but that was no big deal
because he told me I could make that much in a month.
Departure was fixed for 15 March 2013. There were other people,
including 26 Nepalis and others from Pakistan and Bangladesh, who had
signed up for the journey. From Dubai, we were taken to Oman on the back
of a car. After resting for a night, we spent the next day walking over
dry, rugged landscape and reached a private beach the next morning. We
spent two days here waiting for the others to join us. When they did, we
were all lined up, searched thoroughly and robbed of all our
belongings. I lost 400 Dirhams and a watch.
From there we boarded a motorboat to cross the Persian Gulf. The ride
was rough and I felt my heart jumping every time the boat rocked. Later
we learnt that a man from Syangja died of heart complications on the
next boat. The smugglers buried him in the sand once we got ashore to
Iran after eight hours.
When we reached a camp in the middle of a jungle, we met 200 others
like us. Nepalis, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Iraqis, you name
it. Some of us were taken away once in a while, we couldn’t imagine why.One day five Nepalis, including me, were moved to a two-storey house
at midnight. Five of us shared what was only enough for two people to
eat. The following morning, they cornered us and told each of us to call
home for money. That’s when we found we were duped and we would never
reach Europe.
I only knew my in-laws’ number in Nepal. My captors found out I
couldn’t get money off of them and they beat me with a gas pipte. As I
was crying to my brother-in-law, asking him to save my life, the
smugglers looked like they were running out of patience. Three Nepalis
who actually got their families to send money to an account in Dubai
were let go.
We couldn’t understand what they were saying, but judging by their
body language I understood they wanted to get rid of me and Jabar Singh
Darlami, the remaining two Nepalis. Five days later we were driven in a
red van to Minab and put on a bus to Tehran. After spending 18 hours on
the floor of a bus we reached Tehran. There we were about to be picked
by the smugglers’ contacts.
As they tried to force us into a van, we noticed a tap in a nearby
garden. We told those men we were thirsty and sped off without looking
back. After half an hour of running through this strange city, we saw a
policeman at a park and tried to talk to him in our broken English. He
took us to a police station and filed a report, and told us to come back
in a week instead of putting us in prison. In the meantime, he gave us
the phone number and address of Nepal’s honorary ambassador in Tehran.
and advised us to seek its counsel.
When we reached the office twelve hours later, a woman told us she would help us return home and told us to return
some days later. She gave us 5,000 Rial for food but that didn’t last very long because one roti cost 1,000 Rial.
We slept in a park for a week until we were told it was illegal to do
so. An Afghani man found us loitering and employed us at his
construction site, paying us in meals and sleeping quarters.
Twenty days later when we went back to the honorary embassy, the
woman gave us a written note in Persian and told us to take it to the
police. We were arrested upon arrival, tried twice, and jailed for 91
days because we had broken immigration laws. Which wasn’t so bad because
we had two square meals a day.
Three months later, they shifted us to immigration jail because we
had overrun our initial sentence and still didn’t hve the means to go
back to Nepal. Isolated in prison, we didn’t know what went on outside.
One day some people from an international organization came and took
our interview, and told us they would help us return home. And would you
know it, three weeks later Jabar and I were standing at Tehran airport.
I cried throughout the flight home, blessed with my new lease of life.